"Selling Beyond the Close"

by Diane Sanchez, Stephen E. Heiman, and Tad Tuleja

Preventing account erosion means going "beyond the close" to determine how effectively your products or services are performing in relation to what you promised your customers they would perform.

One of the simplest ways to do this is to run follow-up surveys. One of our financial services clients, for example, sends its clients a Customer Satisfaction Questionnaire which begins with the announcement, "Help us make sure that we're giving you the very best service that we can." It contains a detailed list of "performance checkpoints" on which the customer can rate the financial company's effectiveness, ranging from "soft" items like "sensitivity to your unique financial needs" to "harder" items like "technical expertise," "added value," and "reduction of costs."

One of the most interesting performance checkpoints is "characteristics of our personnel." Here the financial firm asks its customers to assess the effectiveness of the selling team itself. Were they "accessible and responsive"? Did they "explain our services adequately"? Did they "make dealing with us a pleasant experience for you"? The goal here is to fine-tune the sales process itself, by getting feedback on its professionalism and proficiency. But this fine-tuning also lets the customer know that, in the financial company's eyes, the relational aspects of selling are just as important as the more obvious nuts and bolts of quotes and contracts. The questionnaire, as a whole, also lets them know that the client is interested in building a long-term relationship.

At Miller Heiman, we follow up with our clients in a slightly different manner. Forty-five days after the completion of any of our corporate programs, we phone the participants to see how well their companies are implementing the lessons. We've stressed that we sell process, not training events, and our Client Support callback program underlines that fact. Our Client Support staff members, Holly Jenkins and Beth Rutherford, are on the phone every day moving our process "beyond the close" by making sure that clients are fully satisfied with what they've purchased from us.

To make a program like this work, client support has to be seen as part of the overall sales job, and the employees charged with that support have to understand the product or service as well as the field staff who sell it. In our case, Beth and Holly are so well versed in the intricacies of our processes that they are able to provide corrections and even mini "refresher courses" to participants who are having trouble with any of the concepts.

On one recent call, for example, an obviously confused Strategic Selling client complained to Holly that he had more Buying Influences that he could possibly keep track of. By questioning him carefully about the key players' roles, Holly was able to determine that he had fused two sales objectives into one, merging the players together at the same time. She suggested that he break the scenario out into two separate sales, and do a separate Situation Analysis for each one. "When I followed up with him later," she reports, "he said that splitting the thing into two had been a great idea. The real opportunities were different from what he had originally thought, but by using two analyses he had been able to clarify things and actually close two orders."

This anecdote reveals the value of open-ended client follow-up. Holly's co-worker Beth reinforces this point in describing the variety she encounters in her Client Support calls. "There's really no typical pattern. We have a question guideline that gets things started, but after that it really depends on the person's responses. We like to let them talk freely about whatever's giving them trouble, and you just have to listen before you give advice. We'll encourage that openness, too, with our phrasing. We might ask, 'Can you tell me a little bit about how you're implementing the process?' and the client will be off and running with a particular agenda."

You've got to listen first, before you can understand anything that is in the customer's mind.

From Selling Machine, by Diane Sanchez, Stephen E. Heiman, and Tad Tuleja. © 1997 by Miller Heiman, Inc. All rights reserved

by permission of Random House, Inc.